


Until It's Time To Bite Down

by meowgon



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Blood, F/F, Humanstuck, Self-Indulgent, Vampires, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2012-12-28
Packaged: 2017-11-22 17:04:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/612164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meowgon/pseuds/meowgon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Terezi Pyrope can hunt any number of demons, but she still can't control Vriska Serket.</p><p>For the prompt: <i>Urban Fantasy AU where Terezi and Vriska grow up together. I don't really care what quadrant they are in or if they are even trolls, I just want them to be really codependent.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Until It's Time To Bite Down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KidScrappy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KidScrappy/gifts).



> I hope this satisfies the need for urban fantasy AND co-dependency satisfactorily!
> 
> Thank you everyone who helped me with the research for this fic and answered my questions. (I'm leaving out your names for anonymity's sake right now!!!)
> 
> Title is from [a great song.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JcFgL2qO9Y)

When the two of them first met, Vriska had blood in her eyes and a lump of torn hair in her clenched fist. She shrieked like there were hungry ghosts behind her, but it was too dark for anyone to stop and worry about one frantic child, no older than eleven.

It took Terezi to quiet her. She pulled her off of the street, fed her bread and water, cleaned the gashes in her hands, and wiped her blood away. Vriska didn't have to convince her of anything. She knew about ghosts. She would help. No one else could help the way she could.

Vriska left years later, silent, with bloody lips and empty hands. Terezi couldn't see her anymore, but she was sure there were more ghosts behind her than ever.

\--

Terezi’s home was on an apartment building roof, far above the city streets. The view overlooked a run-down neighborhood abandoned by city improvement years ago, left to indebted students, the working class, or lower. The only sign of new construction was a distant mosque that glinted brilliant copper in the morning light. Past the mosque, over by Fourteenth Street where the temple had long stood, things were cleaner, newer, even prosperous, but that never reached Terezi's home. An abandoned shipping container kept her warm in the winter, and in the summer she sat in its shade. The rest of the roof was covered by the legal tenants’ attempts at gardens: little plots full of short trees and vines that rarely gave fruit. Terezi left their plants to grow, they left her to her rooftop kingdom. It was an arrangement No one had enough money or time to worry about someone who seemed fine on her own.

Vriska no longer shivered with fear as they crossed the roof and walked into Terezi’s home. With food in her stomach and the blood gone from her face and hands, she transformed into an imperious girl, brash and mean.

“This place is shit! My house was way bigger than this whole building, let alone this smelly box, it was like a castle with great big stairs. And what’s this thing? It’s not even straight.” 

Terezi caught her hand before she could touch the battered metal case to right its tilt. “Stop--that’s important the way it is.” 

Whining wordlessly, Vriska struggled in her grip and tried to reach for the mezuzah case. Terezi yanked her away. “But it’s _wrong_ , it’s all tilty, I know what I’m talking about. Get off! _Get off me!_ ”

“Why are you fighting me?” Terezi asked, fighting her own battle to remain calm.

“Why are you stopping me!? Get off, get off, _get offffffff!_ ”

“I told you, it’s important! Stop being a brat and listen,” Terezi ordered, hoping she sounded like an adult, not a kid of the same age.

“Fuck you! You’re not my _mom!_ She’d let me, she’d... she’d want it to be right...”

Her struggles died as suddenly as they began. Terezi let go of her wrist and stared as the bravado rolled out of Vriska in waves, stealing the straightness her shoulders had regained. Her body slumped inward and the noise she made was painful and ugly. For some reason, Terezi found herself crying with her.

\--

Vriska always pretended that day didn't start or end with tears. In her version of events, she was brave, never crying on the street like a desperate little girl, never begging strangers to help her. Her face was not so dirty that she wasted all of Terezi’s carefully collected cistern water, and she didn't swear and scream as Terezi teased out the knots in her hair. No, she was clean and noble in her suffering, a displaced princess with a dead queen’s legacy to live up to, and anyone who said otherwise was wrong.

Most of all, she and Terezi never fought from the first day. They were newborn sisters, all each other had in the world, and they never fought for real.

\--

It took Terezi a week to work up to the truth. Vriska didn't seem to notice; she was content to lie on Terezi's bed and ramble on about her former home, her mother’s ostentatious reputation, and the superiority of the food and the shelter she received there, on and on and on. The conversation led back to her old life, whatever the topic, like it was waiting for her if she wanted to return. Sometimes, Terezi wanted to put her back on the street, tzedakah or no. She wouldn't, but maybe it hurried her decision.

“A demon killed your mother,” Terezi said. 

Vriska rolled her eyes.

“Can it, Serket, I’m serious.”

“Hey, I didn't say--”

“You know they’re real.”

“Uhhh, no, I do not! Demons are as fakey-fake as fake can get. My mom told me, they're myths made up to scare people.”

“She’s crawling with maggots because of them, and that’s all you can say?”

Vriska clenched her fingers against the bandages tied around her hands. Her skin was dark enough to hide the flush of anger, but Terezi could feel the heat rise off her as she leaned into Vriska’s personal space.

She kept pushing. “It’s true. You saw the hair disappear, didn't you? That means she shifted forms.”

“Fuck off, I didn't see anything!” Her voice was a snarl, and Terezi believed she would have hit her if her hands weren’t marred from the hair she ripped out of her mother’s assailant.

Terezi took her hands and lifted them up. 

“It turned to dust when you let go. That's _evidence_.”

“That doesn't make it a demon,” Vriska whispered. She shook in Terezi’s grasp.

“Yes, it does.”

\--

Terezi taught Vriska to fight. They couldn't afford to be scared, she explained. Children would be devoured if they weren't careful. Survivors were the only ones who made it to another year when there were demons hiding at every turn. She told Vriska the names her mother had told her - words like dybbuk, estrie, succubus - but in the end the individual names mattered less than what they were at the core: demons who sought souls, love, sex, blood, pain, misery, and death. They could shapeshift, possess people, control them, take the form of ghosts, of witches, of vampires. Any impure soul was vulnerable. Any pure soul was vulnerable too. They couldn't lie around, content in their own purity, and feel safe.

The truth came hard, but Vriska learned despite herself.

\--

The night was late enough that the sun was close to rising. Earlier, they'd located a vampire they'd sought for weeks. Together, they bound her hair to weaken her, a trick from Terezi's mother. Terezi read out a list of her crimes to Vriska, who excitedly crowed the vampire was "guilty as charged!" Her knife bit into the demon's body until it reached her heart, and Terezi filled her bloody mouth with dirt. When morning came, the body would disintegrate in the sun, and one more demon would be gone forever. Satisfied, they had returned home.

It was a year since they first met. After a night like that, Terezi found herself open. 

She closed her eyes. Her mother had loved the smell of the city. In the morning, she would open the window and lean out, comment on the scent of trees and cars, her eyes closed as she smiled. Terezi couldn't understand why. She thought the city smelled like wet rot and too many machines and people, piled one on top of another. It felt better to imagine the place she came from. If she really focused, she could imagine it--a soothing, cool breeze from the sea of Caspian, with mountains in the distance. One day she would go there, with her mom alongside her.

“This isn't just a magical egg,” she told Vriska. Her hand rested on the gilded egg that sat in the back of the shipping container. It warmed everything within reach, and stirred occasionally, like something inside was waiting to hatch. Vriska had long been suspicious of it, but Terezi never answered her questioning glances. “My mother's inside here. She was consumed by a demon named Rahab and trapped, but one day she’ll break out of this shell.”

“You’re really off your rocker, Pyrope, what _ever_ ,” Vriska said, but her eye-roll was gentler than it used to be. She'd seen too much.

"Why would you even hold onto a crummy demon egg?"

“Says the girl who feeds flies to the spiders in the garden.”

"They kill the bad bugs! There's nothing weird about feeding such great animals."

"Nah, the verdict's in, you're the weirdo here! Too bad for you, Serket!" 

"Oh _noooooooo_ , what's the sentence, Judge Pyrope?"

"Eight to nine hours in bed, no chance of early parole."

Vriska whined at the order, but she smiled as they climbed onto the old mattress they shared. Terezi smiled back. Vriska could have mocked her for her belief, but instead, she listened. The Vriska version of listening. For someone who'd started out arguing against everything, it seemed like Vriska finally trusted her. Or maybe she was the one who finally trusted her friend?

"Hey, do you think I'm getting better at hunting? Do you think we can do this forever?" Vriska asked, her voice sleepy.

"Not forever, but for a while," Terezi said. She ran her fingers through Vriska's microbraids. The hairstyle was a tearful project that took hours, but Vriska would not entertain the idea of letting someone else do it. 

"I _guess_ a while is good enough. Forever sounds better."

"We'll shoot for forever," Terezi conceded, "now shut up and go to bed."

"Fuck offffffff."

Ignoring the toothless insult, Terezi settled against her pillow. Home was warmer with Vriska in it, and it felt good when she rolled up against her side in her sleep.

\--

When they were thirteen, people from the apartment building started to leave them food as thanks, a silent acknowledgement they believed Terezi and Vriska's battles were real. Vriska wanted to start charging. Terezi gave a little bit of every offering away. There were some things Vriska could never win an argument about. 

When they were fourteen, a room near the top of the building opened up. It stayed open. The keys somehow ended up on the roof, dangling from the door of the shipping container. Terezi and Vriska moved in piece-by-piece over the next week, and no one stopped them. The room became their new sanctuary, the resting place where they could curl up with each other after long nights of hunting.

When they were fifteen, Vriska kissed her on the mouth. The electric shock of the kiss (sudden, defensive, desperate, full of teeth; Vriska in every way) startled Terezi from the long daydream of childhood. She kissed back, and it stung like a broken spell.

When they were sixteen, the queen came back.

\--

"It's her! You saw it! You saw it, it's her! Let me go!"

"You know what this means, Vriska, you idiot, _please_!" 

Terezi's arms could barely hold Vriska back. She whispered a prayer for her strength to hold as she tightened her grip.

"I don't need God, I need _her!_ Let me go! _Mom!_ "

Turning away from them as if she'd never heard a word, Vriska's long-dead mother disappeared down a dark street, her daughter's voice echoing after her.

Vriska's thrashing intensified. There were too many dirty tricks they both knew, places to elbow, to stomp, to gouge; Terezi winced with pain as Vriska targeted every one. Those weak points were supposed to be a secret they shared together, places they'd found and protected. Feeling them turned back against weakened her, brought tears to her eyes, made her resolve waver.

Vriska ripped herself free and ran. The clacking of her braids was the last thing Terezi heard as she followed her mother's shadow.

\--

Like an unholy lost girl, Vriska flew back into Terezi's life through an open window. Her unwound hair formed a halo around her head, and her skin was ashen. Her body felt heavy and cold when she pressed against Terezi, and her squeezing arms held no comfort.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, I'm sorry."

"You're dead, don't touch me," Terezi whispered to her, over and over, but she let Vriska stay.

\--

After years of braiding, the in-and-out movement of her fingers on Vriska's hair was familiar. Vriska endured in silence, her new fangs pressed tightly into her bottom lip. Binding her hair would weaken her, stop her flight and her shapeshifting, but had Vriska agreed eagerly. Afterward, she lay her head against Terezi's shoulder and begged her to make everything else normal again. She would help her hunt, she would do any kind of work, she would do whatever Terezi asked, if things would just go back to normal. Her hand rested against Terezi's belly, hopeful, until it was pushed away. Together, they sighed.

They returned to hunting. It seemed like the only thing to do. But some things could not return to normal. Vriska slept corpse-cold on the couch, drank blood from the demons they hunted, and killed them with an industrious glee Terezi had only glimpsed before. What used to feel like just punishment seemed more like murder when Vriska delighted in the way skin and muscle gave way beneath her fangs.

Terezi refused to kiss her. She washed her hands after they touched, and hoped a demon would not find a way in through her weakness.

\--

"Vriska, where the _hell_ did you go?"

The alley was too dark for Terezi to see a thing. No moon, no stars, and not a working street light for a mile. She cursed Vriska, herself, and the clouds hanging low in the sky. The hunt had started poorly, with a disagreement on what should happen to their target, but everything got worse when Vriska ran ahead to grab the girl on her own. She'd laughed and promised it would be fine.

Terezi's lungs started to burn.

"Vriska!"

The girl lived in the apartment building, and she was one of the few children who'd dared to talk to the young stranger on the roof. The memory was much clearer than the alley Terezi ran down: grinning, she had introduced herself as Aradia, and explorer and a medium to the spirits. There was something about her demeanor that left Terezi smiling back, unafraid. They hadn't talked much since then, only occasional meetings when they needed something from one another, or passed in the building, but Terezi knew she was worth saving. She was only possessed. Sometimes people came back from possession on their own, or with the right prayers.

A pile of garbage jumped out at her feet, and Terezi tripped headfirst around a corner.

The fall stung, but even from her sideways perspective on the world, she knew what was wrong. Vriska's mother was there, her eyes burning with light. Vriska stared at her with hunger, and if Terezi knew her at all, and edge of disgust. Aradia's body lay bloody between them, an offering.

_Of course._

Vriska's mother used her powers to press down on Terezi like a rush of water. "If you don't mind very much, I'll be taking my daughter back now. She's been out of my service for too long, thanks to you."

It was the first time Terezi heard her speak. Her lips were scarred by the many teeth in her mouth, but she sounded like an arrogant, sophisticated belle.

She didn't expect Terezi to laugh.

Slowly, Terezi raised herself from the gravel and asphalt. "Didn't she tell you?" Terezi looked at Vriska, but she said nothing. Her eyes were alive with fear, and anger, and already, the creep of regret. They darted away from Terezi's level stare.

"You can't defeat justice so easily."

She lunged. Vriska's mother raised her arms, but Terezi flew past her, her vengeance directed at another target. What Vriska's mother did wasn't personal. She hadn't known the girl. She barely knew Vriska, anymore. She was void of humanity. _Vriska_ , on the other hand--

"You promised me!" 

"She _made_ me, you don't know how hungry she is! I have to feed her!"

" _You promised._ " Terezi held no weapon, but Vriska was bound to her by her own hands. The strike across her face fell like a hot poker, and Vriska screamed as her skin puckered, burst, and boiled over with blood. Ice ran through Terezi's veins as she struck again, her fingers enough to tear, the skin peeling away to muscle, muscle burning away to bone, bone breaking away to nothing, to an arm that used to wrap around her lying burnt on the ground.

Vriska's mother dragged her claws across her back, but Terezi was already running. The temple wasn't far, and they couldn't follow her there.

\--

No matter how much she washed, her back refused to heal.

\--

Aradia came to her the next morning.

"I was only unconscious," she explained, her smile easy as she offered Terezi a jar of peach preserves. "It's not much, but I wanted to thank you." 

Terezi sat at the small table in her smaller kitchen, where she and Vriska had eaten together until she died. Aradia followed behind her, uninvited. "I have to admit, being kidnapped by a vampire was much more interesting than listening to the spirits warn me about terrible things. Not that I'd like to go through it again, but still, you have to take adventures where you find them." 

Terezi still said nothing, but Aradia seemed unfazed.

"Do you have some bread to put this on? Oh, right here!"

Busily, Aradia took out a loaf of bread from the cabinet, grabbed a knife from the drawer, and carefully sliced two pieces. 

"Is it all right if I have this?" One hand held a container of salt, while the other held a piece of bread.

"Vriska, get out," Terezi finally said. She was so tired.

The plate of bread crashed to the ground, the arm that was holding it vanishing back into nothing. Vriska shrieked in frustration and pain as her half-healed wounds rushed back, painful, as they would always be now that Terezi had refused her.

"You couldn't just give it to me, could you!? Miss Perfect, Miss Holy, you couldn't let me have this one thing. Even though I'm sorry."

There was nothing more for Terezi to say. Her eyes raked across Vriska in silent judgement, taking in her burnt eye, the fangs jutting over her bottom lip, the close shave of her hair. Vriska was a real monster now.

She should have seen the attack coming, but somehow, she missed the movement of Vriska's remaining arm. Salt splashed across her face and into her eyes, where it burned, and burned, and burned.

There was a sound of the salt container clattering on the floor. For a fleeting moment, Terezi felt fangs in her neck. Then Vriska pulled away. Her footsteps echoed in the hallway until the door slammed shut behind her, leaving Terezi alone with the fire in her eyes.

\--

There was nothing else to be done. One inch at a time, she pulled herself across the floor. She couldn't cry, and the salt that should have washed out only burned stronger. One last curse from Vriska Serket. 

There were miles between her and the egg, but she made it there alive. Bloodloss made her weak, but she could still stroke the smooth shell with trembling hands. "Mom," she begged, "mom, please. I don't know what to do."

A crack formed in the shell, then another. Terezi felt them with her fingers, heard them with her ears. There was a sound like splintering glass as the egg shattered and she fell back, overwhelmed by heat. She smelled something like yolk, and like blood. Like salt, and water, and the sea. Whatever was inside the egg unfolded with a hiss.

"Hush, I'm here," said a voice, and she fell into the coils of a warm serpent.

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize for typos and unbeta'dness in general. The last thousand words or so were written at the last of last minutes because I am terrible. But KidScrappy, I hope you enjoyed anyway!


End file.
